Hajime Tamura
Hajime Tamura was a Japanese politician. He held different cabinet posts and served as the speaker of the House of Representatives.
Early life and education
Tamura was born in Matsuzaka, Mie Prefecture, in 1924. In 1950, he received a law degree from Keio University.Political career
Tamura was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1955. In the party Tamura was one of the leaders of the Interparty Relations Committee and belonged to the faction led by Kakuei Tanaka.He was appointed labour minister in 1972 and transport minister in 1976. As of 1975 he was the chairman of the Committee of Korean Affairs of the Afro-Asian Problems Study Group. In July that year Tamura headed a delegation which visited North Korea and met with Korean ruler Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang.
From 1986 until 1988, Tamura served as Minister of International Trade and Industry in the cabinets led by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and then by Noboru Takeshita. Tamura's brief tenure as MITI minister largely revolved around the Toshiba–Kongsberg scandal, when Toshiba was caught illegally selling machinery intended for the production of nuclear submarine propellers to the Soviet Union. According to then-congressman Duncan Hunter, these noise-reduced propellers meant that the range at which American nuclear submarines could detect Soviet nuclear submarines was reduced by 50%. In the midst of the ensuing scandal, Tamura traveled to the United States at the behest of Prime Minister Nakasone to formally apologize to US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. In December 1988, Hiroshi Mitsuzuka replaced Tamura as MITI minister.
Tamura became the Speaker [of the House of Representatives of Japan|speaker] of the House of Representatives on 2 June 1989, replacing Kenzaburo Hara in the post. Tamura's term ended on 24 January 1990 when Yoshio Sakurauchi was appointed speaker. Tamura, nicknamed the “wheeler-dealer” in political arena, continued to serve as a member of the House of Representatives until his retirement from politics in 1996.